Before fancy graphics, coherent writing, and cultural sensitivity, the world was a badder place. Join us as we remember a time when having three frames of animation for your sprite was a luxury and the only requirement for rescuing the president from ninjas was being sufficiently bad.

Friday, April 26, 2013

Top 5 Wimpiest NES Heroes: #2: The Spelunker

Okay, so we could have used this sprite,

but you'll be much more familiar with that first one if ever make the terrible life decision of playing Spelunker. Or, more likely, if you're kidnapped by mind terrorists and forced to play Spelunker in a horrific experiment.

Cave exploration was a terrible choice of career for this guy. And not just because he's easily killed by bats, falling sand and stalactites and cave ghosts. Any one of those subterranean dangers could fell an average man. Well, except for the bats. And the sand. And ghosts usually don't have corporeal form, so they're mostly harmless. But let's be charitable and imagine that these so-called dangers are indeed a threat to the typical cave explorer's existence.

That doesn't explain how or why the spelunker dies any time he comes into contact with steam. I guess it must be hot, but come on, why aren't you wearing protective gear?

An extremely charitable rendering.

Most appalling, however, is the spelunker's complete and baffling inability to survive a drop of more than six inches. Not six inches on the television screen, mind you––six relative inches in the actual world of Spelunker.

And we're not talking falls on the head or back, either. These are planned leaps, feet first.

You can see why he chose the wrong career. Cave exploration is all about delving ever deeper into the earth, and this is a man who would die trying to take the stairs.

It should tell you something that Spelunker's spiritual successor Spelunky, which was released within the past couple of years and is infamous for its balls-to-the-wall, old school difficulty, is way more forgiving than the original. You can fall at least 15 feet before you die!